SAP BODS install using response file

BODS (or business objects data services) is an ETL tool from SAP that I've had the pleasure of having to install a number of times over the past couple of years.

I've got very frustrated with this process and I've finally got round to making it easier for myself - I've documented it here as it may be useful for other users.

We're running the software on SLES (unlike 99% of the rest of the customers it would seem who are on windows). This gave us a few challenges when installing but now I've got it down to a fine art and have actually set it up now with response files so the install is even easier

So first up I'm assuming you have a separate unix account with which to do this (don't use oracle....) and that this account has permissions on the oracle software that is already installed (i.e. access to tnsnames and networking libraries etc)

I'm also assuming that all of the relevant ulimit values are set appropriately - as an example here are mine

Once that is in place you need to track down the SAP software (this is easier said than done) and also get hold of the appropriate licence key that has been purchased (again easier said than done)

I'm just going to be installing the 'information platform services' which is the base services used for many products, followed by the dataservices software.

I'll leave you to track down the software from SAP marketplace yourself - the IPS software once I'd extract if ended up in a tree like this (once i'd unrar'd it - who uses this - come on?)

$ANY_DIRECTORY/51043631/DATA_UNITS/SBOP_IPS_lnx

Anyway once it's unzipped the installation script is called InstallIPS - this just seems to wrap the setup.sh script and provide the licence key for you. You can install the software with setup.sh as normal but then you have to provide the key - for me the installer did not seem to want to accept the (valid) key i had.

ANyway as I'd done this a few times i wanted to make the process easier - i discovered (by accident) that the tool can be passed a response file to tell it what to do (exactky as we use for oracle installations) - all i had to do was work out what format this file had to be in.

This turned out to be incredibly easy

All you have to do is this:

./setup.sh -w /tmp/responsefile.ini

This fires up the installer as usual - yoou answer all the questions as normal - at the end the the script exits immediately and a file is produced.

This file can then be passed in to the setup.sh command to run a prompt free installation. The ini file has to be populated with licence keys and passwords however - these are removed during the initial capture process. Once that is done we have a response file that can be used to make the IPS install a 1 line command./setup.sh -r /tmp/responsefile.ini

And about 20 minutes later it's all done and everything is up and running - easy eh?

Now i repeat that same process for the dataservices install (following the exact same steps) and again about 20 mins later dataservices is fully installed and working.

Now all i have to do is repeat the exact same steps in the other test and live environments - this makes the process easy - and also means all the installs will end up exactly the same - no worries about someone choosing the wrong option

Now all i have to do is set fixed ports in the cms console to prevent any firewall issues